The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Burma Washes Its Hands of the Rohingyas

The piece reproduced below originally appeared at Asia Times Online on November 12, 2012 under the title MyanmarFixates on Rohingya Calculation. Its thesis is perhaps better
represented by the title of this blog post, Burma Washes Its Hands of the
Rohingyas.It can be re-posted if ATOl is credited and a
link provided.

My ATOl piece tiptoes close to the TL:DR (too long didn’t
read) danger zone since I wanted to go to considerable lengths to document the
organized character of the anti-Rohingya pogrom and rebut the “ethnic strife”
and “plague on both their houses” narrative that is being put out to Western
audiences by almost every political and religious actor in Burma/Myanmar, up to
and including Aung San Suu Kyi.

Anti-Rohingya racism has, to a certain extent, been ginned
up by the military government; however, the government is building on a
long-standing tradition of Buddhist/Burmese chauvinism—fueled in part by
Burmese resentment at the Rohingyan role as an instrument of British political
and economic penetration during the Raj times-- with communal violence between
Rohingya and their local Rakhine/Arakan antagonists dating back to at least the
1930s.

The key factor in the current pogrom against the Rohingya appears
to be the willingness of various key players in Burma, for a variety of sordid
political and financial reasons described in the piece—a clutch of important votes in the national parliament and billions of dollars of expected revenue sharing to Rakhine state from its adjacent
offshore natural gas fields-- to pander to the Rakhine Nationalities
Development Party.

The RNDP controls Rakhine State (the home of the hapless Rohingya).It has built its political fortune on Arakan
chauvinism ( “Arakan” or “Rakhine” being alternative terms for the Buddhist but
non-Burmese minority group on the shores of the Bay of Bengal) and its current
campaign against the Rohingya may remind one of a ruthless and cynical campaign
in the 1930s against a certain minority whose name begins with J by certain
political party whose name began with N led by a certain guy whose name began
with H in a certain European country whose name begins with G.There!Godwin’s Law safely evaded.

Arakans have also had a traditionally prickly relationship
with the Burma nationality that dominates the Irrawaddy basin.Arakan has a good case for calling itself the
traditional Buddhist heartland of the region and is a reliable agitator for
autonomy if not independence.The
historical Buddha allegedly paid a miraculous visit to Arakan and personally breathed on a statue of
himself cast at the order of the Arakan king, causing it to assume the Buddha’s
physical form.This priceless relic, the
Mahamuni Buddha, was spirited away (actually sawn
into pieces for convenient transport) by the Burmese to Mandalay in 1784 as war
swag, where it was reassembled and resides to this day.Every morning Buddhist faithful wash the
statue’s face and brush its teeth.The
statue has been coated to a depth of 15 cm (6 inches) by donations of gold
leaf.

Although the Arakans have to make do with a replica at the
original temple site of Kyauktaw and probably harbor a grudge over the removal
of their statue, it has not become a flashpoint for Arakan/Burmese
conflict.

Instead, the Mahamuni Buddha sparked anti-Muslim riots in 1997, in an incident that
looks like regime incitement to cover up a particularly egregious incident of greed-driven Burmese junta sacrilege
against the Arakanese artwork.

I will outsource this story to the lengthy Wikipedia entry
on Persecution of Muslims in Burma ,
written by an aggrieved Burmese Muslim.Note that the ignition spark was provided by the alleged rape of a
Buddhist girl by Muslims, just as the current violence in Rakhine State is
traced to the alleged rape of a Buddhist girl by three men, two of whom were
supposedly Rohingya :

The bronze Buddha statue in the Maha
Myatmuni pagoda, originally from the Arakan, brought to Mandalay by King
Bodawpaya in 1784 AD was renovated by the authorities. The Mahamyat Muni statue
was broken open, leaving a gaping hole in the statue, and it was generally
presumed that the regime was searching for the Padamya Myetshin, a legendary
ruby that ensures victory in war to those who possess it.[37]

On 16 March 1997 beginning at about
3:30 p.m., a mob of 1,000-1,500 Buddhist monks and others shouted anti-Muslim
slogans.[citation
needed] They targeted the mosques first for attack,
followed by Muslim shop-houses and transportation vehicles in the vicinity of
mosques, damaging, destroying, looting, and trampling, burning religious books,
committing acts of sacrilege. The area where the acts of damage, destruction,
and lootings were committed was Kaingdan, Mandalay.[38]
The unrest in Mandalay began after reports of an attempted rape of a girl by
Muslim men, although this was later disproved and led to speculation that the
regime may have orchestrated the incident to deflect anger from the damaged
statue. At least three people were killed and around 100 monks arrested.[39]

In my piece I make a reference to "Burma's Buddhist Taliban" while comparing the remarkably similar trajectory of "fundamentalist" Theravada Buddhism in South Asia and the Taliban in Central Asia as expressions of chauvinist/nationalist/cultural/religious resistance to the challenge of British imperial assimiliation. As another passage from the Wikipedia entry
indicates, the Taliban parallel is not just facile phrasemongering.When challenged by Taliban Islamic extremism—in
Afghanistan!—Burmese Buddhists, at least those egged on by the government, were
keen to make sure they gave as good as they got in the destruction of heathen
monuments department:

2001
Anti-Muslim Riots in Taungoo

In 2001,Myo Pyauk Hmar Soe Kyauk Sa Yar (or) The Fear of Losing One's
Race and many other anti-Muslim pamphlets were widely distributed by monks.
Many Muslims feel that this exacerbated the anti-Muslim feelings that had been
provoked by the destruction in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.[40]
On May 15, 2001, anti-Muslim riots broke out in Taungoo, Pegu division,
resulting in the deaths of about 200 Muslims, in the destruction of 11 mosques
and the setting ablaze of over 400 houses. On May 15, the first day of the
anti-Muslim uprisings, about 20 Muslims who were praying in the Han Tha mosque
were killed and some were beaten to death by the pro-junta forces. On May 17,
Lt. General Win Myint, Secretary No.3 of the SPDC and deputy Home and Religious
minister, arrived in Taungoo and curfew was imposed there until July 12, 2001.[41]Buddhist monks demanded that the ancient
Hantha Mosque in Taungoo be destroyed in retaliation for the destruction in
Bamiyan.[42]
On May 18, however, Han Tha mosque and Taungoo Railway station mosque were
razed to the ground by bulldozers owned by the SPDC junta.[43]
The mosques in Taungoo remained closed as of May 2002. Muslims have been forced
to worship in their homes. Local Muslim leaders complain that they are still
harassed. After the violence, many local Muslims moved away from Taungoo to
nearby towns and to as far away as Yangon. After two days of violence the
military stepped in and the violence immediately ended.[44]

Emphasis added.To
round out this post on outrages against various religious monuments, I hoped to
include a picture of the Han Tha Mosque, but was unable to locate one.

A few points of interest.

First, the two colossal Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan, one 55
meters tall and the other 38 meters tall, which the Taliban obliterated at great
effort and expense amid international execration, were already missing their faces in 2001.That particular act of vandalism was
committed by Abdur Rahman Khan, the “Iron Amir” of Afghanistan during his
campaign to subjugate the Hazara minority, whose homeland is around the town of
Bamiyan, in the late 19th century.Abdur Rahman Khan’s job was to preserve Afghanistan’s role as an
independent buffer state against Russia for his own benefit and for the sake of his British backers.When the Hazara rebelled, he subdued them
with supreme violence to prevent Britain from perceiving a dangerous power
vacuum and intervening, and used his artillery to deface the statues.

The Hazara could be termed the Rohingya of Afghanistan.They are Turkic, Persian-speaking Shi’ites whose
name apparently derives from the Persian word for a force of 1,000 men, perhaps
a reference to a Mongol military unit.According to the study of the notoriously ubiquitous Central Asian "star cluster" Y chromosome identified with male
line descendants of Genghis Khan, the population with the highest percentage of
this gene (even higher than Mongolia and Inner Mongolia!) is the Hazara.

The Hazara are treated as outcasts and face
disenfranchisement and savage repression from the Pashtun (both Abdur Rahman Khan in
the 19th century and the Taliban in the 20th/21st
declared jihad on the Hazara).It
appears that whenever the Pashtun gain the upper hand in Bamiyan they took a
knock at the Buddhist statues in order to advertise the subjugation of the
Hazara, even though the Hazara are not Buddhists and the statues predate their
arrival in central Afghanistan by several centuries.

There is nothing to take a knock at now.Only two hollow niches remain (though the
destruction serendipitously revealed a treasure trove of Buddhist grottos
hidden at the back of the statues) and UNESCO has decided it is impractical to
try to rebuild the statues from the remaining rubble.Ironically, I suppose, the largest statue
represented Vairocano, the Buddha of Emptiness (the other was Buddha Sakyamuni).

Second, that hotbed of Theravada Buddhist fundamentalism,
Sri Lanka, made considerable efforts to save the Bamiyan statues and
subsequently to buy the rubble.Sri
Lanka then declared it would duplicate the destroyed statues in Sri Lanka. (Heroic
efforts to preserve Buddhist relics are a hallmark of Theravada kingship and
government legitimacy to this day, and Sri Lanka is no exception.Another notable example is the king of Burma's attempt to rescue Ceylon's precious Buddha’s tooth from destruction by the Portugese Inquisition in Goa in 1561.)

Eventually, a one-third replica of the larger Bamiyan statue
was erected in the coastal town of Peraliya in 2006, with Japanese financial
support.Instead of serving as an as a
monument to Sri Lanka’s Theravada Buddhist assertiveness, it became a moving
commemoration of the thousands of victims of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami who perished in
Peraliya and the vicinity.

Apparently in response to the destruction of the Bamiyan
statues, China erected a 128-meter statue of Vairocana, now the largest statue
in the world, in Henan Province.The “pedestal”
beneath the colossus in the photograph to the left is a four-story Buddhist monastery.

In China, a replica of the smaller Bamiyan statue of Sakyamuni
Buddha is being carved into a mountainside near the monumental Buddha sculpture
at Leshan.

Somewhat unexpectedly, at least to the Western observer, it
is possible to push the modern South Asian Buddhist’s hot buttons with
invocations of “jihad” and “the Muslim threat to Buddhism” and, in Burma at
least, this hot button is pushed with dismaying frequency.

Unfortunately, recent
events have shown that anti-Rohingya bigotry is far from a monopoly of what
Westerners would term “anti-progressive and anti-democratic forces” a.k.a. the
regime and its goons.It happens to be
part and parcel of deeply-felt Burmese Buddhism chauvinism, chauvinism that was
supercharged by the challenge of British imperialism, is now directed against
the People’s Republic of China, but may be redirected at a later date against
Burma’s would be benefactors/exploiters in the West.

To outside observers, the carnage
inflicted on the Rohingya minority - a five-month
spasm of violence and de fact ethnic cleansing
ostensibly stemming from the rape of a Buddhist
woman by three Rohingya men - in Rakhine Province
is indefensible and inexplicable.

What is
even less understandable to Westerners is the
virtually universal closing of ranks among local
and national governments, pro and anti-government
Buddhist monks, junta apologists and pro-democracy
activists, President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu
Kyi, all uniting to deny the apparently undeniable
fact that an old fashioned pogrom is taking place
against Rohingya minority and other Muslims.

Friends of Myanmar are puzzled and
dismayed that the progressives they have
championed have joined forces with the country's
most reactionary forces to deny the overwhelming
evidence that Rohingya - a dark-skinned Muslim
ethnic minority with cultural and linguistic ties
to neighboring Bangladesh - are being driven out
of their homes by a campaign of intimidation,
arson, and violence in 2012 that builds upon years
of marginalization and demonization.

Seventy-five thousand Rohingya IDPs
(Internally Displaced Persons) have been herded
into camps on the outskirts of the state capital,
Sittwe, and other towns.

In a sign of how
bad things are, thousands of Rohingya are trying
to flee to Bangladesh, even though they are not
welcome there and their only possible refuge if
they aren't turned back are two squalid UN-run
camps surrounded by a ring of miserable
unsanctioned huts.

Exasperated by Myanmar
denialism, Human Rights Watch published a
satellite photo showing most of the Muslim quarter
of a sizable town, Kyak Pyu, burned to the ground.
[1]

(As is usual in these matters,
nomenclature follows political inclination. The
official government identifiers are Myanmar and
Rakhine State. People disinclined to legitimize
the regime's terms use Burma/Arakan).

The
local Rakhine government and its dominant
political party, the Rakhine Nationalities
Development Party, or RNDP, have been at the
forefront of the anti-Rohingya campaign, according
to Rohingya advocate Nay San Lwin.

Writing
in Turkey's Today Zaman, he asserted:

The tragic cruelty and the carnage
of Rohingyas that occurred in Sittwe, the
capital of Arakan (now known as Rakhine) state,
is assumed to have been caused by Dr Aye Maung,
member of parliament and chairman of the Rakhine
Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) because
in his interview with Venus News Journal on June
14, 2012, he said, "The Rakhine state should be
established in the way Israel was initially
established." That's the dream of the Rakhine
people. They want to drive out Rohingya Muslims
from the Rakhine (Arakan) state, their current
leader Dr Aye Maung asserted in that interview.

In the last week of last month, a RNDP
statement indicated, "Bengalis must be
segregated and settled in separate, temporary
places so that the Rakhines and Bengalis are not
able to mix together in villages and towns in
Rakhine state." "Repatriating non-citizen
Bengalis to a third country in a short period of
time must be discussed with the United Nations
and the international community," the statement
added. The RNDP also issued a statement early
this year against a job announcement by CARE
International in Myanmar, an NGO working in
Arakan state, for using the term "Rohingya."
[2]

Local Arakanese monks have been
pitching in as well, according to Democratic Voice
of Burma:

A group of Arakanese monks have
called for Rohingya "sympathizers" to be
targeted and exposed as "national traitors"
while tensions again flare between Buddhists and
Muslims in Burma's westernmost state.

In
a document seen by DVB, the All-Arakanese Monks'
Solidarity Conference have urged locals to
distribute images of anyone alleged to be
supporting the stateless minority group to all
townships in the region, potentially opening
them up to violent attacks by nationalist
extremists. …
Many Arakanese monks have
repeatedly called on local Buddhists to sever
all relations with the Rohingya community,
including trade and the provision of
humanitarian aid. [3]

Another ugly
message was delivered courtesy of some Rakhine
Buddhist university students:

Hundreds of Buddhist university
students in Sittwe in Rakhine State rallied on
Wednesday against Rohingya Muslims as communal
tension was at a heightened pitch in western
Burma, according to news service reports.

More than 800 students joined a rally to
call for an end to "studying with terrorist
Bengalis" and for the removal of Muslim villages
on the road to the university. [4]

In
addition, the RNDP embarked on an active political
and public relations campaign to reframe the
pogrom as "sectarian clashes" in order to present
its supporters - the rioters - as the injured
party, especially if foreign diplomats show up to
commiserate over the plight of the Rohingya.

In June, the Secretary General of the RNDP
complained:

Q : We have knowledge that UN
Secretary General's Special Advisor on Myanmar
Mr. Vijay Nambiar visited the town of Sittwe
through Buthidaung and Maungdaw Townships of
Rakhine state and head back straight to Yangon.
However, during his trip, he did not meet the
representatives of ethnic Rakhine. What's your
say on this?

A: I would so much like to
talk about this issue. … We feel highly upset
about Mr. Nambiar's failure to meet [Rakhine
ethnic representatives] despite coming to
Rakhine state. That makes us wonder about the
stance of UN. There was no press conference
either. And that is purely a totally unpleasant
situation.

Therefore it makes us wonder
the true motives of Mr. Nambia, is he being bias
against those of ethnic Rakhine? So, by looking
at this event, it's obvious that there are
people who are pulling the strings from behind;
otherwise, there is no reason for such a high
ranking diplomat like him to dare not to call
for a press conference. For an organization like
UN, which is the de-facto representative of
world's democratic societies, such a big failure
is a heinous diplomatic mistake.
[5]

When the Organization for Islamic
Cooperation proposed setting up a humanitarian
liaison office in the state capital of Sittwe,
local "offended Buddhist" women marched through
the streets of the state capital, wearing mass
produced T-shirts and brandishing mass-produced
banners. [6]

That's bad enough. But there
was more. The national government of Thein Sein
endorsed the position of the Rakhine State
government and declared that the best deal for the
Rohingya would be to herd them into UN camps for
their own safety and then deport them to whatever
third country would take them.

At the
national level, the anti-Rohingya wave was not
limited to the callous, knuckle-dragging
authoritarians associated with the Myanmar
military junta (now the pro-Western reformist
regime in Nyapyidaw).

Buddhist monks and
democracy activists piled on, excoriating the
international community for daring to care about
the Rohingya.

The leadership of the 8888
student democracy movement, while vigorously and
commendably deploring the violence against the
Rohingya, adamantly declared its disdain for the
persecuted group:

Rohingya is not one of the ethnic
groups of Myanmar at all. We see that the riot
happening currently in Buthedaung and Maungdaw
of Arakan State is because of the illegal
immigrants from Bangladesh called "Rohingya" and
mischievous provocation of some international
communities. Therefore, such interfering efforts
by some powerful nations on this issue (Rohingya
issue), without fully understanding the ethnic
groups and other situations of Burma, will be
viewed as offending the sovereignty of our
nation. Genetically, culturally and
linguistically Rohingya is not absolutely
related to any ethnicity in Myanmar … Taking
advantage of our kindness and deference, if the
powerful countries forced us to take
responsibility for this issue, we will never
accept it. Concerning with the sovereignty, if
we are forced to yield by any country, we, the
army and democratic force will deal the issue
together as a national issue. [7]

From
the Western liberal perspective, the worst was the
studied disdain of Aung San Suu Kyi- whose
official title in the Western press appears to be
"democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Aung San Suu Kyi- for the plight of the Rohingya.

When pressed on the issue at Harvard
University, she went Ice Queen, according to
Global Post:

The forum at Harvard's Kennedy
School Thursday evening was little shy of a
lovefest …Until someone mentioned the "R" word.

Thanking Suu Kyi for "being our
inspiration," a student from Thailand said: "You
have been quite reluctant to speak up against
the human-rights violations in Rakhine State
against the Rohingya … Can you explain why you
have been so reluctant?"

The mood in the
room suddenly shifted. Suu Kyi's tone and
expression changed. With an edge in her voice,
she answered: "You must not forget that there have been
human-rights violations on both sides of the
communal divide. It's not a matter of condemning
one community or the other. I condemn all human
rights violations." [8]

A few observations here.

First, the central government is
definitely along for the anti-Rohingya ride. It
(together with Aung San Suu Kyi) has adopted the
morally neutral "sectarian clashes" narrative,
with the implication that the Rohingya are
equally at fault for any violence, a framing
that official Chinese agencies - the PRC, of
course, is a key political backer for the
current regime - have carefully reproduced in
their coverage. [9]

In July, the local
Arakanese news agency carried a report on a
delegation of movie stars - again, wearing the
mass-produced T-shirts that seem to be an
integral part of political expression in these
matters - on a charitable mission to comfort
refugees created by the crisis … the ethnic
Rakhines displaced by the crisis, not the
Rohingya.

As the report makes clear,
the group, organized by the chairman of the
Myanmar Motion Picture Association, concentrated
its efforts on Buddhist refugees sheltering at
religious establishments in the capital of Sittwe:

"I was very glad and broke into
tears when I saw the stars I love coming to
offer their aid to us," said a female refugee
who is sheltering in the camp of Ray Kyaw Thu
Monastery in Sittwe.

Anti-Rohingya bigotry has been a
mainstay of the dictatorship for decades.
Famously, the regime denied citizenship for the
Rohingya in 1982, stigmatizing them as
non-Burmese, and laying much of the foundation for
their current misery. The junta has been accused
of knowingly inciting anti-Rohingya violence if
and when government misbehavior might expose it to
the anger of the monks.

However, morally
bankrupt divide and rule tactics by the military
junta are not the full story.

The regime
draws on a considerable and easily tapped
reservoir of anti-Rohingya feeling in Burmese
society, feeling that has perhaps been exacerbated
by the overtly racialist Greater Burma propaganda
of the government but is to a certain extent
inherent in the religious and social worldview of
many politically-engaged Burmese.

Myanmar is Theravada Buddhist, as are Sri
Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Theravada
Buddhism is a doctrinally conservative Buddhism
very close to the original practice laid out by
Gautama Buddha. It is predicated upon a Buddhist
domination of a secular polity under the rule of a
king who acts as defender and promoter of the
faith.

Back in the day, the main priority
of the Theravada Buddhist state was to establish
the social and financial infrastructure that would
enable Buddhist monks to achieve enlightenment.

Theravada Buddhism was devastated by the
arrival of Western imperialism in Asia, especially
by the incorporation of South Asian states into
colonial regimes and the extinction or sidelining
of the Buddhist kings. Sri Lanka and Burma got
rolled into British India; Laos and Cambodia
became part of the French system. Even Thailand,
which retained its nominal independence, was
forced to confront the challenge to its legitimacy
and authority posed by Western power and Christian
proselytizing.

Theravada Buddhism, like
other traditional religions of Asia, upped its
game in response to the imperial challenge.
Theorists developed a vision of Theravada Buddhism
as a mechanism for national renewal- and national
resistance against British rule. The movement
started in Sri Lanka as the Young Men's Buddhist
Association - the YMBA. The name, though it sounds
quaint, was both a direct challenge to the YMCA,
an important agent of Christian penetration among
Sri Lanka's youth and professional classes - and
an adoption (and implicit endorsement) of its
methods.

There are interesting parallels
between the Theravada renaissance and the 19th
century movements to redefine Indian Islam- which
was also experiencing severe stress as national
integration threatened to redefine Indian Muslims
as a national minority, instead of the holder of
various local majorities. The remorseless
transformation of Indian society led, on the
political level, to the eventual partition of the
British Raj into India and East and West Pakistan.

On the religious level, it led to the
development of a more militant,
politically-engaged brand of Indian Islam through
the rise of the Deoband school. The Deoband
madrassah prepared Indian Muslims for an
existential struggle against the forces of
Westernization and Hindu dominance by emphasizing
Islamic renewal, resistance, doctrinal rigor, and
intolerance for the accommodating and syncretist
brand of Sufi Islamic observance practiced in many
areas of the Indian subcontinent.

In the
20th century, the Deoband school also inspired a
conservative Islamic backlash against foreign
penetration into Muslim central Asia; we know
these arch-conservatives (actually Islamic
neo-fundamentalists) as the Taliban.

"Myanmar's Buddhist Taliban" is an
unwelcome framing, and certainly unfair when
contrasting the intensity of violence practiced or
condoned by the two groups.

However, it
should be noted that religiously-supported
Buddhist chauvinism was a key element in the
estrangement between Sri Lanka's dominant Buddhist
population and its Tamil minority. The political
conflict climaxed in a virtual war of annihilation
successfully carried out by the Sri Lankan
government (with significant Chinese military and
financial support) against the Tamil Tigers. Sri
Lankan "Buddhist fundamentalism" - a quest for
national renaissance through a rededication to
Buddhist practice and goals- has inspired Burma as
well.

Burmese Buddhism, traditionally
locked into a solipsistic quest for personal
enlightenment, has been repurposed as a political
and social movement, drawing justification from
the exalted (healing society as an exercise in
compassion) and pragmatic (poor societies lack the
ability to give suitable alms to Buddhist monks,
thereby endangering the Buddhist project).

This led to the emergence of a class of
politically active monks with immense social
prestige, whose leaders the Myanmar dictatorship
has desperately and largely unsuccessfully labored
to co-opt. It also encouraged the emergence of a
uniquely Myanmar Buddhist bigot, for whom the
continued presence of the Rohingya is an affront
to the Buddhist purity and cultural unity of the
nation.

The existence of an ineffectual
Rohingya liberation movement among exiles in
Bangladesh adds fuel to the fire.

The most
conspicuous Buddhist voice in the national (as
opposed to Rakhine State) protests against the OIC
initiative is a monk, U Wirathu, with a history of
imprisonment (providing him with activist
credibility) and anti-Muslim agitation. In
September, he led a 5,000-person march in Yongyon
supporting President Thein Sein's proposal to
either hand over the Rohingya to the UN Human
Rights Commissioner or deport them to any third
country that would have them.

On the
occasion of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha,
Wirathu posted a video which, according to the
translation by a hostile party, accused the
Rohingya (or, in his formulation, "the Bengalis")
of acting as a front for Islamic infiltration and
destabilization of Burma, starting with an
"invasive jihad war" against Rakhine with the
objective of establishing an Islamic state.

Wirathu also accused the Rohingya
Solidarity Organization of "drugging children in
order to get them to fight" and "disguising
themselves as ladies". Perhaps this reflects
Wirathu's goofball worldview; more likely it is an
attempt to explain away the child and female
casualties of the pogrom.

He concluded by
declaring that it is imperative to protect the
Rakhine State in order to protect the Myanmar
motherland. [11]

Al-Jazeera's Wayne Thay
speculated that Wirathu has assumed the role of
pro-government provocateur on the Rohingya issue.
[12]

Perhaps the monk's outlook was
remolded by the 10 years he spent in prison and
his crude propaganda is orchestrated by his
minders in the security apparatus.

Certainly, the "protect the Rakhine"
meme - a perverse inversion of the actual
anti-Rohingya pogrom - is a framing with which the
central government, religious establishment, and
democratic movement all feel comfortable.

International NGOs calling for relief and
protection of the Rohingya have, to their
distress, been targeted with astounding vitriol by
the very activists they championed for decades of
pro-democracy struggle. (It also appears that the
NGOs, having comfortably occupied the role of
democracy's respected agents inside Burma, are
also ill-equipped to deal with the chauvinistic,
anti-imperialist spirit that is at the core of
Buddhist fundamentalist dissent and which has been liberated
by the recent political reforms)

Mark
Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK wrote of his dismay
and bewilderment at the attacks his organization
has endured for trying to call attention to the
Rohingya situation:

Another reason we are attacked over
Rohingya issues is that we have a Muslim staff
member. From the moment Wai Hnin Pwint Thon
joined Burma Campaign UK, messages started to be
left on our Facebook Page by people from Burma,
attacking her because she is a Muslim. …
Lies
posted and spread about Wai Hnin Pwint Thon
include that she is secretly Rohingya (she
isn't), she has been accused of working with
Rohingya Solidarity Organization (she doesn't),
of wanting to create a Caliphate in Burma (she
doesn't), of taking money from Rohingya (she
hasn't), and even that she has had several
children with different Rohingya men (she
hasn't). She has faced not just lies but abuse,
much of it sexual in nature. …
Around a year
ago, I tried to engage Dr Aye Chan in a
conversation on why he and his followers spent
much more time criticizing Rohingya than they
did the dictatorship. Aye Chan was incapable of
having the discussion without repeatedly making
personal attacks. The email conversation was
forwarded to various email groups, and my in-box
was flooded with abusive emails. When I asked
Aye Chan to ask his supporters not to use
personal abuse and threats, and to condemn those
who do, he repeatedly refused to do so. When
leaders not only fail to condemn abusive and
personal attacks, but even make personal attacks
themselves, their followers will copy their
behaviour. [13]

Dr Aye Chan is a very
well-known figure in the Myankar democracy
movement, and also an Arakanese. Previously
imprisoned by the junta as a dissident, he is now
welcome because his scholarship and advocacy
provide a veneer of legitimacy to anti-Rohingya
sentiment. In September, he attended a conference
on "National Identity and Citizenship in 21st
Century Myanmar" in Yangon and was pointedly
greeted at the airport by an Arakanese delegation.
According to the Arakanese news agency:

Arakanese were said to have held
placards and banners that included one which
read "Dr Aye Chan, Save the Land of Arakan"
while welcoming him at the airport.
[14]

News coverage approvingly
noted his book on the Rohingya, Virus
Influx.

The evidence is overwhelming
that anti-Rohingya sentiment permeates the warp
and weft of Burmese society and dominates both
government and anti-government institutions at
local and national levels.

Aung San Suu
Kyi is obviously uncomfortable pushing back
against this bigotry, perhaps because of shared
religious values (she abandoned the clear eyed
multi-ethnic socialist politics of her late father
for an airy brand of Buddhism during her
incarceration) and because the support of Buddhist
monks significantly leverages her political power
and reach inside Burma.

But the savage
pogroms of this year beg the question Why Now?, a
question that Rohingya diaspora spokesman Dr Waqar
Uddin himself could only answer with sputtered
confusion on an Al Jazeera interview show, despite
the determined effort by the anchor to elicit a
coherent response. [15]

And why has Aung
San Suu Kyi imperiled her international reputation
- a key weapon in the arsenal of Burmese democracy
- by refusing to tap her admittedly shallow
reserves of pro-Rohingya compassion?

The
answer may be found in by understanding the
dynamics behind pogroms- the carnivals of violence
against despised minorities that, in Western
literature, are most closely associated with the
persecution of Jews in Europe.

A detailed
analysis of the anti-Jewish pogrom in Odessa in
1905 concluded it did not ignite "spontaneously".
It was orchestrated- and its excesses were
condoned or encouraged in a time of significant
political flux and heightened anxiety a society
preconditioned towards violence against Jews. In
1905 Odessa, the political disorder attending
reforms promulgated by Tsar Nicholas was blamed on
Jewish agitation, and a pogrom incited among the
impoverished and enthusiastically anti-Semitic
populace in order to advance a particular
political agenda.

Robert Weinberg's
analysis [Robert Weinberg, "The Pogrom of 1905 in
Odessa: A Case Study" in Pogroms: Anti-Jewish
Violence in Modern Russian History, John D
Klier and Shlomo Lambroza, eds. (Cambridge,1992):
248-89] can, with little imagination, be applied
to the pogrom against the Rohingya in Burma and
the accusations of "jihadi invasion" (with the
observation that the ostensible "threat" posed by
the beleaguered Rohingya is more in line with the
manufactured hysterics of 1930s Germany than the
acute crisis of the Tsarist order in 1905):

How then are we to explain the
outbreak of the pogrom? ... Okhrana [secret
police] chief Bobrov, for example, concluded
that Jews were responsible for provoking
pogromist attacks because they were spearheading
a revolutionary attack on the autocracy in an
effort to establish their "own tsardom.". …

… According to the testimony of L D
Teplitskii, an ensign in the army, as early as
15 and 16 October policemen were proposing to
use force against Jews … As one policeman told
Teplitskii, "Jews want freedom - well, we'll
kill two or three thousand. Then they'll know
what freedom is." … In working-class
neighborhoods policemen and pogromist agitators
went from door to door, spreading rumors that
Jews were slaughtering Russian families and
urging Russian residents to repel the Jews with
force. … An army captain informed Kuzminskii
that a policeman had told him that his superiors
had given their permission for three days of
violence because Jews had destroyed the Tsar's
portrait in the city council.

Certainly this is a period of
significant political flux in Myanmar. Eager to
shed the Chinese incubus and attract Western
interest and investment, the Myanmar regime has
opted for reconciliation with pro-democracy
forces, a pro-Western tilt, and elections for
parliament in 2015.

It is widely expected
that Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy will do quite well and the USDP, the
junta's political front, will have its work cut
out for it if it hopes to gain even a third of the
contested seats- which, when combined with the 25%
of seats reserved for the military, would still
give it the upper hand in the parliament.

It has been suggested that Aung San Suu
Kyi's unwillingness to stand up for the Rohingya
reflects a calculation that her standing among the
bigoted Burmese electorate will suffer if she
sympathizes with the despised minority.

However, her immense reserves of political
capital inside Myanmar argue that she could retain
her standing and reputation despite a statement on
behalf of the Rohingya. Her dogged refusal to
yield on the issue - even as her international
reputation takes a hit - suggests that narrower,
more tactical political considerations may be
driving her response.

In a development
that has considerable bearing on the Rohingya
issue, democratic reforms have given rise to a
plethora of local-chauvinist party in the ethnic
borderlands of Burma. The non-Rohingya people of
Rakhine State (who prefer to call themselves
Arakanese) are a distinct, Buddhist ethnic
minority of Burma, with a contentious history of
demands for autonomy, federalism, or even
independence from Yangyon. The party of Arakan
chauvinism, the RNDP did very well in both the
local elections and the general election for seats
in the national parliament reserved for Arakanese
both from the state and from the Arakanese
diaspora in Mandalay. The Rakhine parliament is
the only state parliament controlled by a party
other than the USDP.

On the occasion of
the 2012 election, the RNDP allied with the NLD. A
party official described the USDP's hamfisted idea
of outreach: sending over the general who was
previously in charge of looting the province to
canvas Rakhine on behalf of the USDP.

Q: Some local villagers are saying
they will lodge a complaint against Maung Oo for
the sale of cooperative society-owned land while
he was serving as a regional commander in
Rakhine State. Do you know anything about this?

A: Yes, we know about it. This case
happened in Kyaukpyu Township in Gonechein
village. He looted this land while he was a
regional commander here and his soldiers guarded
the land. We heard that the local villagers
tried to prosecute him. The people are aware and
enlightened now. A regional commander can no
longer do whatever he wants.

Q: The USDP
party suffered a huge loss in Rakhine State.

A: By their sending a man like Maung Oo
here, our Rakhine party profited. Now the USDP
has a hard time getting support here. Our
Rakhine people are happy because of their
mistake because it made our party more popular.
Even if we do don't do anything, the Rakhine
people will not support our rival party.
[16]

Judging by news reports, the USDP
is trying to make up for lost ground, and also
find a countermeasure to deal with a likely
landslide by the NLD in the majority-Burmese
heartland by reaching beyond the Irrawaddy core to
the various non-Burmese but Buddhist ethnic groups
that control Burma's impoverished but
resource-rich borderlands.

Since the Chairman of the RNDP, Ayu
Maung appears to have made the solution of
Rakhine's Rohingya problem his first priority,
perhaps the USDP calculates that, by giving a
tacit green light, moral support, and propaganda
and diplomatic cover from the central government
to the RNDP-sponsored pogrom of the Rohingya, the
foundation is being laid for a strategic alliance
that will counter the NLD post-2015.

However, even if the RNDP and the USDP
bond over a shared commitment to human rights
violations, this is not a marriage made in
political heaven- not without a little financial
midwifing, anyway.

An inevitable
by-product of political reform is overturning the previous policy of crude
exploitation and malign neglect which
characterized the junta's dealings with the border
minority areas. The forestry, gemstone, and energy
treasures of the borderlands were extensively if
inefficiently looted by the officers of the junta,
primarily to China's benefit.

Now, it is
time for the USDP to woo these ripped-off
minorities. Beyond the atavistic gratification of
the occasional pogrom, the key issue at stake is
resource sharing or what might be called "resource
provincialism."

The message was sent out,
to the English-speaking world, at least, via Radio
Free Asia:

Senior minister Soe Thein said
President Thein Sein's government was all for
providing greater autonomy to ethnic states,
where armed conflicts had raged for years,
particularly under the previous military junta
rule.

"It is our dream, the president's
and ours, to transfer the power to [the ethnic
nationalities] to govern their regions," he told
RFA's Burmese service on Monday.

"Parliament needs to amend some of the
revenue sharing [laws], for instance, to
increase [the ethnic states'] portion in revenue
sharing, as stated in the appendix to the
constitution, for their development," said Soe
Thein, who is on a US visit.

Ethnic
groups have long been excluded from Burma's
politics during decades of brutal military rule
which came to an end in March 2011 when Thein
Sein's nominally civilian government took over.

Parliament is at present considering a
proposal to change rules in the appendix to the
country's 2008 military-written constitution to
allocate a percentage of revenue from natural
resources to each of the country's states and
divisions.

The proposal was made by a
head of the ethnic Rakhine Nationalities
Development Party. [17]

Note the
reference to the RNDP.

The RNDP, through a
member of the Upper House of the national
Parliament, has suggested a "suitable rate or 25%"
be reserved for the originating state. 25% is a
huge step up from zero and, in the state of
Rahkine, has the potential to pour billions of
dollars per year into the state's coffers. [18]

That is because of the Shwe gas field, off
Rakhine's coast, is already a major supplier to
Thailand. A Shwe concession developed by the PRC's
China National Petroleum Company is the
cornerstone of one of China's most highly touted
energy security initiatives - the pipelines to
China. When completed, probably in 2013, twinned
natural gas and crude oil pipelines (the gas
pipeline carrying Shwe gas, the oil pipeline to
carry Middle Eastern petroleum) will cross Rakhine
Province, the Shan state, and into China's Yunnan
Province, to drive the economic development of
China's southwest and, ostensibly, remove the
threat of interdiction of Chinese oil shipments in
the Straits of Malacca.

China has already
committed to pay US$150 million in transit fees to
the central government; but the big money would
come from a Burmese/Rakhinese share in gas
revenues. Current total revenues from exports to
Thailand are north of $4 billion dollars, though
where this money goes and how it is spent is
apparently an awkward subject for the Burmese
government. Back of the envelope, Rakhine State
might be looking at revenues of $1-$2 billion per
annum if it can get a sweet revenue sharing deal.
That's a nice income for Rakhine, whose total
population is around 4 million people (3 million
if the Rohingya aren't counted) - half of whom
live below the poverty line.

The Minister
also frankly discussed the political dimension:

Soe Thein, who is a minister in
Thein Sein's office, said that ethnic-based
parties should not be ignored in the national
agenda.

"There are not only two main
parties, the USDP and the NLD; we have multiple
parties, including ethnic parties and others,"
he noted,

Key ethnic players in the
resource game are Arakan State, the Chin, and the
Mon.

Of course, teak, gemstones, and opium
are interesting business opportunities; but the
low-lying fruit (for which Western oil companies
are panting) is easily-accessible offshore energy
resources in Rakhine.

If the USDP could
orchestrate it, a generous revenue-sharing
arrangement with the Arakanese (and the Mon,
Kachin, and Chin) would relieve the USDP (and
China) of their isolation in parliament and buck
the generally pro-Western political, diplomatic,
and economic trend inside Myanmar. Certainly, Aung
San Suu Kyi's parliamentary strategy does not
involve her getting boxed in by a majority
composed of USDP remnants, military officers, and
obstreperous ethnic MPs.

So it is tempting
to speculate that her marked unwillingness to
criticize the Rohingya pogroms reflects her
understanding that criticism of the human rights
failings of Rakhine State would endanger her
alliance with the Rakhine bloc in parliament - a
bloc, moreover, that will wield disproportionate
clout if and when it gets access to revenue
sharing from the offshore oil and gas fields.

On the oil and gas issue, in August Aung
San Suu Kyi made the rather gnomic observation
that Western oil companies should avoid
cooperating with Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise
(MOGE), the government oil and gas company. MOGE
is notorious for parking royalty payments in
overseas accounts instead of repatriating them
back into Burma, and acting as an unaccountable
piggy bank for the military. (Aung San Suu Kyi's
concerns are persuasively summarized in a report
by Arakan Oil Watch). [19]

Nevertheless,
the warning was not particularly appreciated by
the foreign oil companies, who see MOGE as the
only local player with the ability to get things
done in country. In an interesting illustration of
what happens when democracy and Western business
interests collide, the Obama administration
carefully finessed her concerns when it lifted
sanctions so that US oil companies could charge
toward the Burmese trough (subject to some special
MOGE-related reporting requirements that appear
rather pro-forma).

Perhaps her remark was
meant to encourage Rakhine State to agitate for
its own oil company, thereby starving MOGE and the
army of fresh cash, and, to China's dismay, also
depriving the USDP of the economic and political
leverage in Rakhine created by alliance between
MOGE and foreign bidders. [20]

It is safe
to say that China's biggest priority in Myanmar,
now that the Myitsone Dam took a bullet, is to
make sure the gasfield and pipelines projects go
smoothly, and it is looking to the USDP and greedy
if not particularly friendly elements in Rakhine
to protect it from a toxic combination of
principled, Sinophobic, and opportunistic outrage.

CNPC is rushing ahead to complete the
pipeline so that its existence will form "facts on
the ground,", not a cancellable project. The
pipeline is projected to be completed in 2013,
probably before the World Bank has chosen the
colors for the binders in its latest lavish
exercise in Burmese capacity-building.

CNPC is also engaged in belated outreach
to win the hearts and minds of the people impacted
by the pipelines or, at least, shower money and
attention on the ethnic politicians who hold the
fate of the pipelines in their hands, thereby also
communicating the PRC's political priorities and
expectations to the USDP and the central
government.

As is apparently obligatory in
these cases, CNPC set up a website highlighting
its "Caring for Energy, Caring for You" mutually
beneficial development agenda, including
contributions to local well-being such as a $10
million donation to hook up Rakhine State to the
national power grid. [21]

Expect more of
the same spontaneous generosity as Burmese
democracy heats up and Sinophobia - with its
threats to China's energy interests - moves closer
to central stage.

In any case, in Burma
the road to democracy (and marginalization of
China's interest) is steep and winding. The sad
case of the Rohingya indicates it may not be
completely honorable, either.

13 comments:

"There is a tradition starting with Muhammad himself to threaten anyone who criticizes their prophet or their beliefs. Muhammad himself had critics assassinated, thus Islam has encoded violence to others and regards this as the right of Muslims. Muhammad sexually enslaved female war captives and committed countless rapes, thus rape of "infidel" women is considered the right of Muslim men. This is likely the mentality that led to the rape and murder of the Burmese Buddhist girl."https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/c0.0.843.403/p843x403/190359_463694543674341_1943148906_n.jpg

*President Obama apparently agrees with what I have been saying: China is a growing threat * [sic]http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/NK17Ae01.htmlhmm, kinda like a gangster come to ur house n point a gun at u , then demands to know why r u threatening him ?

+The Korean people know that the naval base at Gangjeong is not for the South Korean Navy but for the US Navy. Look at the pyongtaek base. Pyongtaek is the nearest US military installation to Beijing and Shanghai. It is only one or two hours away by civilian airplane. Firing a missile would take no time at all. .+http://space4peace.blogspot.sg/2012/10/encircling-china.html

are these *democracies*, are they even sovereign ?+when I and several other Americans called the Korean embassy in Washington to register our concerns, we all received similar versions of the same prepared response, “Don’t call us; call the U.S. State or Defense Departments; they are the ones who are pressuring us to build this base.+http://www.fpif.org/articles/naval_base_tears_apart_korean_village

Yasuhiko Yoshida, professor of international relations at Osaka University +Japan is a puppet, a satellite country. Japan is too obedient to the US; too loyal politically, economically and in security affairs+http://www.newsinsider.org/editorials/the_three_legged_stool.html

australia+We really like using you guys", said the American. "It's like this:

the Brits have the gurkhas; we've got the Austraaaaaaalians.+http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/28339

*This is the reason behind the administration's policy reversal and its decision to engage with Naypyidaw. Unfortunately, though, it also means that unlike with Libya (and one suspects in coming months Syria), the US will not take strong steps to help the people of Myanmar escape their tyranny.*

+Instead, Obama has decided that this goal, freedom for the people, can be sacrificed. America can renew its alliance with Myanmar's dictatorship, in its new civilian disguise, against China. This is yet another deceptive, and pathetic, abandonment of American principles. +

u cant *abandone* something u dont have in the first place professor.elementray, watson

p.s.1] in case u missed itthis is how they robbed the land for the Pyongtaek basehttp://web.archive.org/web/20080330232530/http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200605/200605040021.html

while israel is doing another round of *shooting fish in a barrel* routine in gaza, what's the world's top *hr* office doing ?ah, mrs navi pillay is busy fretting about tibet.http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/NK07Ad01.html..that perennial cause celebre for the *democracies*

been thinking, why do certain countries constantly have to cower under the wrath of the *ic* whenever some *disturbances* ccur at homehttp://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE27Df01.htmlhttp://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/NK09Ae03.html

while others nary get a peep ?http://www.countercurrents.org/janson181112.htmhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33107.htmhttp://tinyurl.com/3s4bvzuhttp://www.countercurrents.org/hr-sagar240804.htm

are what the chinese, sri lankans allegedly doing any worse than the fukusi *activities*?being no *hr* crusaders like so many anglos/gringosim not in a position to judge

0r is it coz china etc are *rogue states* while fukusi are *democracies* ?wait a min, shouldnt a *pastor* be held at a higher standard than , say, a *mobster* ?

then it hits meit all boils down to franchiship this is the franchise ownerhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29666.htmthese r some of the franchised outletshttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4732.htmhttp://web.archive.org/web/20080705133009/http://insafindia.org/publication/afspa%20license%20to%20kill.htmthis is how proper people do biz.

it make sense, if u dont buy a proper franchise , its an infringement of ip, nothing riles the *democracies* more than an ip violation !

so if the chinese , myanmese , sri lankans fancy doing a gaza, or even fallujah, be sure to get a proper franchiship , then they'd enjoy a free hand dealing with their *disturbed area*. uncle scam often lend a hand to his clients, christ, he enjoy doing such stuff, its those unlicensed dealers that pisses him to no end.

America can renew its alliance with Myanmar's dictatorship, in its new civilian disguise, against China. This is yet another deceptive, and pathetic, abandonment of American principles. +Loan Against Gold